This application relates in general to the Internet, and in specific, to a method and apparatus that allows a user to quickly locate a community of others having a like interest.
URLs, or Uniform Resource Locators, are used to locate resources on a network. A resource is an object on the Internet network or an intranet network that resides on a host system. Objects include directories and an assortment of file types, including: text files, graphics, video, and audio. A URL is the address of an object that in normally typed in the address field of a web browser. The URL is a pointer to the location of the object.
A user would locate a particular object on the Internet by using a search engine. A search engine implements an algorithm that finds information or objects on the web, e.g., ALTAVISTA, EXCITE, INFOSEEK, LYCOS, or GOOGLE. The search engine uses a spider or web crawler program to go through a data base to find information based on user-defined parameters or requests.
Another feature of the Internet is communities or discussion groups. A community is a web site or location on a web site on the Internet that is associated with a particular topic, subject, or theme. Users can go to the community and discuss or research the topic. For example, Yahoo.com has several different communities that are organized by area of interest. For example, under the Arts and Humanities section of Yahoo.com, there are about twenty six different categories of communities that a user could choose to visit. For example, a user would select the Artists category and the Masters sub-category, to view information and provide comments on Salvador Dali. If a user cannot find a particular community, the user can create a community, and place the new community in an appropriate place within the category hierarchy.
A further feature of the Internet is USENET. USENET is a news category service that facilitates discussion categories on the Internet. USENET discussion categories are based on the exchange of news articles, bulletins, and messages. The categories are an extension of e-mail messages, but are more efficient at delivering information to large categories of people. Articles and messages are put into a central database, and users access the database to read the information. Users may also access the database to provide information. News categories are organized into a hierarchy with top-level categories having names such as comp (computers), news, rec (recreation), sci (science), etc.
One main problem with these features of the Internet is finding the desired community. Originally, only USENET existed, and finding the desired community was relatively easy, as all of the information was centralized. However, as the Internet has grown, communities have become scattered across many sites. In other words, the Internet has allowed information to become decentralized. Consequently, users have a harder time finding desired communities. For example, finding a community of users to discuss the FORD THUNDERBIRD may be as easy as going to www.ford.com, because of FORD MOTOR COMPANY""s well known website and presence in the marketplace. However, less obvious destination websites such as www.CarAndDriver.com or www.MotorTrend.com might host similar communities that would be of interest.
Finding communities on less common topics is generally much more difficult. Currently, the main tool for locating any internet resource is a search engine, such as those mentioned previously. The use of search engines for locating communities has major drawbacks: (1) Search engines index on literal words across all webpages and resources it can find on the internet. They are not focused on communities. Therefore, the search results are voluminous and unwieldy. In fact, most of the results are not communities. (2) Servers that host multiple discussion categories or communities may not report all of the topics to the search engine for indexing. Even working within a known category of communities is difficult. For example, YAHOO communities have to be manually searched by selecting different categories and sub-category before locating the proper category. This trial and error way of searching is time consuming and may not result in the desired community. Also the hierarchy or taxonomy of the communities is fixed. Additional communities can be added, but the structure of the categories and sub-categories is fixed and cannot be evolved or grown.
Therefore, there is a need in the prior art for a system and method that would allow a user to easily find and access communities that are associated with a particular topic or theme.
The present invention is directed to a system and method which allows a user to easily find a desired community discussion category that pertains to a topic of interest. A preferred embodiment of the invention involves a hierarchical structure for a plurality of communities and a matching engine that essentially only searches the plurality of communities. It is preferable to allow any internet user to index a community that seems pertinent into a particular location in the taxonomy or to extend the structure by adding new subcategories in the taxonomy. It is also preferable to have a moderator monitor any extensions, and potentially alter those changes to enhance the structure. This allows the communities and the community structure to evolve with changes in the topics related to the communities and the structure.
The communities are preferably organized into a hierarchical structure or taxonomy. The hierarchy would depend on the particular nature of the category of communities included in the structure. For example, categories associated with computers might be separated into two main categories, home and business, with each main category having multiple sub-category, e.g., printers, scanners, computers, display, software, etc. Each sub-category could comprise multiple sub-categories, with no arbitrary limit on the number of levels of branching. Each category or sub-category could include one or more communities, but may not contain any communities at all. For example, the business level may have communities for laptops, desktops, and personal data assistants, while the home level has no communities at that level (however, the home level""s sub-category may have communities).
This structure is preferably implemented by storing the keywords, links between the keywords, along with URL links for the communities into a database. For example, a user is looking for a WINDOWS 98 community, and types in:
www.hp.com/search-communities/computer/software/operatingsystem/windows98
And the search produces the community at:
www.microsoft.com/software/windows/windows98.htm
This structure or hierarchy of the search terms typed in by the user would allow a user that is familiar with the structure to readily find a desired category with little or no searching, e.g., the user would merely type in the URL for the desired community. Exposing the hierarchical structure to the user allows the user to move up/down a level to find broader/more specific communities that are related.
The invention preferably uses a matching engine to locate desired communities within the plurality of communities. The matching engine uses a keyword matching algorithm to find communities that are related to the search criteria. The keywords are stored in the database and are associated with the URLs of the communities. In this algorithm, search terms offered to the matching engine are compared to the keywords in the database. The community database would comprise keywords associated with the different categories of the structure and the URLs of the communities that are indexed in the structure. The matching engine can locate any communities, regardless of their actual location on the internet, as long as the communities are indexed in the community database with keywords. Note that the matching engine has a much smaller keyword database than other search engines, e.g., Google.com. The keyword database consists essentially of information associated with the communities in the hierarchical structure. This allows for faster searches and yields search results that are directed to communities in specific, and not to web pages in general. Note that the URLs are also stored in the database, but are not searched by the matching engine.
The foregoing has outlined rather broadly the features and technical advantages of the present invention in order that the detailed description of the invention that follows may be better understood. Additional features and advantages of the invention will be described hereinafter which form the subject of the claims of the invention. It should be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the conception and specific embodiment disclosed may be readily utilized as a basis for modifying or designing other structures for carrying out the same purposes of the present invention. It should also be realized by those skilled in the art that such equivalent constructions do not depart from the spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the appended claims. The novel features which are believed to be characteristic of the invention, both as to its organization and method of operation, together with further objects and advantages will be better understood from the following description when considered in connection with the accompanying figures. It is to be expressly understood, however, that each of the figures is provided for the purpose of illustration and description only and is not intended as a definition of the limits of the present invention.